1843 was quite the year in Christmas lore. It can boast both the first Christmas cards, commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, and the first edition of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Our passion for the former may have ebbed a little in the age of digital communication, but Dickens’s novella – albeit most commonly in one of its many theatrical adaptations – continues to draw our interest. Melbourne is currently hosting the Old Vic production of Jack Thorne’s adaptation at the Comedy Theatre (with David Wenham as Scrooge). Now it also has an opera première: composer Graeme Koehne and librettist Anna Goldsworthy’s version for Victorian Opera.

Koehne and Goldsworthy, both professors of music at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide, were briefed by Victorian Opera to create a version that was site-specific to Melbourne. This they have done with qualified success, supported by Bridget Milesi’s street-wise costuming. Visual and textural references to local places and interest abound, but Dickens’s tale is unmistakably of its time and place, and the story requires something more than surface-level repackaging if it is ultimately to be as effective as social commentary today as it was in mid-nineteenth-century Britain.